walking the sacred spiral
walking the sacred spiral
In 1990 I was creating a format for a weekend women’s retreat and I had walked into our church bookstore to look at titles and see if I could get an idea for what to call it. I found what I was looking for in the title of one of the books, but I also found something else.
I don’t remember exactly what it was that I saw in the bookstore that day that started it. But I began to notice spirals. It was as if the image itself had come to find me. They felt meaningful to me, though I couldn’t understand why.
I began to do research to see what culture this image had come from, but it was hopeless. They were everywhere, in every culture, since ancient times. They symbolized cycles of life, beginnings and endings, the growth of consciousness, energy moving up and out or down and in, or vortexes of healing and balance. There seemed to be no tracing them to a particular period or place.
Why had they come to me with such an irresistible attraction? At the time I was a young single mother and minister. There was a lot in my life to balance and keep track of, so the symbol of continuity and movement that spoke of an innate order and grace was not only deeply comforting, but also inspiring.
Not long after that first retreat, I made a trip to Santa Fe, a place I felt pulled to visit. I went there alone over my birthday and bought my first hand drum in Taos. I still feel a close affinity for Santa Fe, and have visited it many times.
A few years later I visited Peru and went to Machu Picchu, a site I had felt inexplicably drawn to since I had first seen a photo of it. It was a mystical experience I repeated when I went back to the Urubamba Valley and visited the sacred sites around Cusco again.
Many years later when I was in graduate school studying imaginal psychology, we used imagery to discovery what deeper wisdom was being revealed to us through the symbols and images that drew our attention.
I came to trust the inner wisdom that guided these seemingly random choices. I found that in most situations, people were helped, encouraged, unstuck, and moved forward in their healing processes through the use of the symbols and imagery they were attracted to work with.
In the western world, we think of symbols as having no power of their own, but merely representing an idea. Perhaps this is a naïve and overly simplistic interpretation.
The swastika has a long history in ancient cultures as a symbol of the earth, goodness, strength, and protection. It was known in the Americas among indigenous people. When Hitler used it the wheel was circling backward from the traditional direction of some tribes, and was red instead of black. Some Native Americans interpreted this to be a destructive symbol that could not succeed because it held within it, for them, the essence of unraveling.
Why are we emotionally affected by symbols tied to music or art? What is it within us that is reached and touched so deeply by the imagery expressed? Why should we think that just because a symbol represents a common, human experience that has been recognized for centuries, it doesn’t hold energy that is itself meaningful for us?
Pyramids on two continents, the Inca walls and the Nazca Lines in Peru, and the similarly huge-scale chalk images in England, Stonehenge, the stone heads on Easter Island, and many other mysterious structures and symbols dot the planet. The original meanings–to their makers–have been lost to us, but perhaps we can discover personal meaning in them today.
If a symbol, image, place or metaphor calls your attention to it, sit with it. Draw it. Find it in art, architecture, jewelry or monuments. Research what it meant then. Feel into what it means for you now. Ask it what wisdom it holds for your path today. Let its ancient energy serve and support your journey. There is wisdom surrounding us that longs to be of use if we are available to receive it.
What symbols, images, metaphors or places are calling to you at this time in your life?
What’s Your Sign?
Wednesday, August 27, 2014